Wheeling Sunday register. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1882-1934, 1887-03-20

that would not have seem possible. But
Rome was not built in a day. her task
was the work of firing years. Yet IL was
its exceeding great reward. The Llnwood
scbool children came to look on life from q
loftier plane coming among them alter Iney
became men and women would have cata-
loeued among their virtues n graceS d
broad intelligence, adelicate sense OF nohor
an Ease and polish OF manne soclaiiy, a
kindliuess that in some wise neaTed them
tn the ideal community.
Tins bravely Shirley wrought. Sne was
forced to the deferment of her own hlgnt-
eot sweetest hopes. She toiled year by
yeer At a labor that was hateful to her.
Vet. working through the children com
mitted 10 her care, it was her happy prlVl-
lore IN quicken Linwood into a higher,
S1sr life Was not that something? 1t
was much. 80
house. Shirley had known little OF tne
world socially. When she became the VII
lace school mistress, the faithful Mis-, Simp
kins had advised her that she must
herself acquainted with the families OF her
nnniIs. That was TO gain the general good
will, The good dame gave the young
teacber much advice. Mis- Simpkins was
always ready to give away anything that
cost nothinn.
Shirley attended some Of the neighbor-
hood festivities. They grated on her pam
tnllv. She shrank apart from the com
pany. The woman's clacS, the harsh gui.
faw of the men, the idiOtic ~Snlckerlng Of
the older girls, only repealed her.
In the conversation of the Linwood wo-
men the most petty incident, the most
contemplate fault or mistake of those who
we're absent were taken up and discussed
with an intensity and made as much of 1t
as if the fate of a kingdom had hung on
them. q,
Shirley sat in silence. She listened and
meditated. The thought of her poem was
! seldom long absent from her mind. 1t ran
like an undermotive through her every
dav deeds-the only bright theme in her
! life then. Above all, the dream of a klngly
woman haunted her imagination still. She
had said that the people in her grand epic
that was to be should be women. She
could create the Eingly women from the
vision IN heE imagination, but she had
thought the minor characters were TO come
from life. Were all the women in the
world like these in LinwOOd? Then whence
were the women in her poem to come?
Another thought chased this one. Her
girl p~upilS-wOuld they be like that, too,
when they came to be women?
They shall not, " said Shirley.
She went no more to the LinwOod Sew
--... D. T.,,, NL,t l,- ekn v-,a
drawn nearer to her girls, to work more
earnestly with them. She answered now
to them the question she had asked her
father in childhood, and the answer was
this:
"A girl has as much sense as a hoy if
she will make use of IT."
She impressed on them intensely that
their intellectual powers were given them
for use, and they would be guilty of moth
ing less than a sin if they neglected them.
You learn your lessons as well as the
boys do" she told the larger girls. why
should you get stupid later? Don't let me
hear of it!'
With a sweet inSistence she protested
from day TO day that they should not allow
their mental horizon to narrow till it in
closed only ribbons and gossip. They must
not follow the millions of their kind, who
live and make no impression on their world
than gnats upon an elephant. When they
died it was recorded on their tombstOnes
that they were the wife of Smith. That
WAS all.
Shirley read and studied with her girls.
She interested them permanently in sci
ence, in literature and in the large affairs
of life. Cannot a genius do all things?
Yet with all this work, this intense con-
centratiOn Of energies elsewhere, the poem
had again to be put OIL.
SO more years moved on.
And still no more news Of the master.